It was a busy week in technology patent wars, with developments in numerous …

Tech vendors seem to spend as much time suing each other as they do actually making products. The patent wars can be fascinating—but also a confusing mess of suits, countersuits, motions, settlements, and a billion news articles trying to make sense of it all.

We're trying a slightly different approach this week, with a recap of the week's top news in patent lawsuits, featuring some stories we've already reported and others that are notable but haven't yet received a mention on Ars. Apple in particular was busy this week, but the Oracle vs. Google case had some developments, Linux organizations looked to shore up their patent portfolios, and patent trolls targeted the gaming industry (and Apple).

The Apple patent chronicles

Let's start with Apple. On Monday, Apple won a motion to gain access to previously secret details about Google's development of Android, as part of its lawsuit alleging that Motorola smartphones violate Apple intellectual property. Despite protests from Google and Motorola (which are in the process of completing a merger), US District Court Judge Richard Posner sided with Apple's claim that it needs insight into the Android development process to determine how much money in licensing fees or court damages Apple should be entitled to from Motorola's (allegedly) infringing Android-based products. Exactly what is contained in those details wasn't revealed, and the judge also granted Apple access to information on Google's acquisitions of Android, Inc., and Motorola.

Apple's week wasn't all roses, though. The company's attempt to sue Eastman Kodak Co. was halted by a US Bankruptcy judge, who said Apple's pursuit of claims against Kodak would be inappropriate while the company is in bankruptcy. "Apple in February had asked the court for permission to lift a stay freezing a patent lawsuit pending in a federal court in Kodak's hometown of Rochester, New York," Reuters reported.

In the pending case, Apple claims Kodak "misappropriated" its technology to wrongly obtain a patent allowing previews of digital images on LCD screens, The Register reports. The court suggested that Apple and Kodak find a way to settle the case without interfering with Kodak's plans to sell off its patent portfolio and emerge from bankruptcy, Reuters said. But Apple also wants to file a new infringement lawsuit against Kodak claiming that it violates Apple patents related to digital cameras and printers. The judge rejected Apple's request to revive its pending litigation as well as the request to launch a new lawsuit against Kodak.

Apple's strategy has generally been to prevent the sale of competing products that allegedly violate its patents, particularly when it comes to Android. But as Ars' Chris Foresman reported this week, Apple has softened that stance by offering to license some of its smartphone-related patents to Motorola and Samsung. Apple has reportedly asked for as much as $15 per handset in exchange for the patent licenses.

Open source patent wars

Oracle's long-running lawsuit claiming Google violated Java patents in Android has been diminished greatly, but is moving forward. Oracle faced a tough decision about whether to drop the remaining patent claims in its lawsuit, open source watcher Brian Proffitt at ITworld wrote this week.

"At issue for Oracle is the problem that nearly all of the patents they brought against Google in the patent and copyright infringement case have either been found to be invalid or are undergoing re-examination by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a process that could take up to 18 months and offers no guarantee for Oracle that the reexamined patents will even be found to be valid," Proffitt wrote.

On Friday, Oracle decided to drop all but two of its remaining patent infringement claims against Google, which will help get the trial underway faster.

The case involves both patent and copyright claims. Even if all the patent claims had been dropped, the copyright claims would move forward. Either way, Oracle wants royalties on those millions of Android phones being sold with each passing week. Groklaw has been posting frequent updates on the Oracle/Google case for those who want to catch up on the latest happenings.

Android isn't the only Linux-based open source project to face frequent patent threats. We've written about how Red Hat handles patent trolls. Red Hat is also part of an industry consortium called the Open Invention Network, which, along with IBM, Sony, Phillips, Facebook, HP, and dozens of others are building up a defensive patent portfolio to protect Linux-using members from potential lawsuits.

The more patents you have, the less prone you are to lawsuits. The threat of a countersuit can be enough to scare off a competitor's threat, or at least pave the way for mutually beneficial cross-licensing deals. The Open Invention Network is in the process of greatly expanding its coverage of software packages and Linux-based mobile operating systems, as ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols wrote this week.

There are a few other stories worth noting before we sign off. Apple was sued by a patent holding company called Core Wireless Licensing S.a.r.l., which claims the iPhone and iPad infringe eight patents related to wireless communications, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Core Wireless has an indirect affiliation with Microsoft. Core's parent company, Mosaid, owns patents it acquired from Nokia last year. Microsoft paid for a license to those patents and receives a "passive financial interest in future revenue generated by Mosaid from the licensing of those patents to others," Microsoft told The Register.

Patent trolls—loosely defined as companies that make no technology of their own but acquire patents to assert against companies that actually build products—have also been going after businesses involved in social gaming. In case you missed it, Ars' Kyle Orland examined this trend in the March 2 story "Patent troll lawsuits strike at the heart of free-to-play games, apps."

Among a couple other happenings this past week, Samsung filed a new lawsuit against Apple in South Korea on Wednesday, saying the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 infringe three patents related to displaying data, the user interface, and short text messages, Reuters reported.

Apple was already suing Samsung, in California. Samsung has been trying to get Microsoft to testify in the case because it believes Microsoft has prior art that would undermine Apple's claims. Microsoft doesn't want to get involved, however, and filed a motion on Tuesday seeking to block Samsung's subpoena because it's overly vague, Patently Apple reports.

On the e-book intellectual property front, Amazon looks to be bolstering its patent portfolio either to defend itself against lawsuits or launch attacks of its own. On Tuesday, Amazon was granted a new patent covering a method and system for annotating digital works. As you may recall, Microsoft's case against Barnes & Noble's Nook devices involves a couple of patents related to annotating documents. Amazon already has a licensing deal with Microsoft allowing it to use annotation technology in Kindle e-readers, however, so the company is safe on that front.

12 Reader Comments

Ultimately, this is a sad spectacle of the state of patent laws right now.

1. They increase barriers to entry through fears of litigation, licensing fees.

2. All costs in legal fees will be passed onto the customer eventually; we pay for all of this litigation ultimately.

3. If large firms like Samsung have the resources to fight this kind of thing, small startups do not, which hinders rather than helps innovation. Even then, every dollar spent on this is a dollar that could have been spent on R&D, capital investments, or something else more useful to society.

4. Unless your firm has a very successful time in court (Rambus, a firm that contributes nothing comes to mind), the only winners are legal firms, and patent trolling firms.

5. Most of these "innovations" are dubious (Amazon's shopping cart is another example). I can understand drug patents (as R&D takes years, and millions, often billions, although the system is rigged for big pharma right now), but software patents - not as much. Plus the length of these patents, when one considers the rate of the software industry moving is an eternity.

6. They encourage large firms to acquire rather than to spend more internally on R&D or developing their own innovations..7. They force companies (at least the ones with the resources to, anyways) to get their own patent portfolios to form a deterrence strategy (ex: Google).

8. Related to the barriers to entry, currently dominant firms are entrenched (Apple) rather than forced to compete more intensively.

Apart from legal firms and large entrenched firms (such as Apple in this example), it's hard to see how this is beneficial for society as a whole. Eliminating software patents right now seems like a lesser evil. I once had a long passionate argument with a patent lawyer on this subject - in the end, I concluded that he had few original arguments; he just spewed what he was taught in law school. Of course, it's tough to get people to agree when their self-interest is so closely tied to this. It's like arguing with a tobacco executive on the health impacts of smoking on society.

According to the author of this story, the Oracle issues should be resolved really quickly, with any payments just going from the left pocket to the right one of the corp lawyer sitting in the blue towers. Why, you ask? "On Friday, Oracle decided to drop all but two of its remaining patent infringement claims against Oracle, which will help get the trial underway faster." :-)

I just dont get it a patent is not a patent if it is re-examined and found to be unworthy. The question then arises what proportion of the many hundreds of millions of patents are equally unworthy. How often is such worthiness on the average patent checked? Why were they granted in the first place so many questions and each leads to only more questions. How much does a judge or whoever the judge appoints to decide the validity of the patent cost? Why would anybody that has a brain want this when they can just proclaim a secret recipe that cures all ills called conveniently a cure all. What is this magical thing that would cure all in this complex market of patents trolls and ladders leading to judges chambers where shady deals are struck. The average technology is good for what 5 ten years tops yet a patent can be extended untill there are no humans left to pay royaltys. I say lets change that, no technology patent is valid 7 years after its approval. This will increase the pace of innovation as everybody will know that any patent issued before they were born is no longer valid. It will also make patent trolls less likely as they wouldnt get a patent untill its on its dying breath.

According to the author of this story, the Oracle issues should be resolved really quickly, with any payments just going from the left pocket to the right one of the corp lawyer sitting in the blue towers. Why, you ask? "On Friday, Oracle decided to drop all but two of its remaining patent infringement claims against Oracle, which will help get the trial underway faster." :-)

3. If large firms like Samsung have the resources to fight this kind of thing, small startups do not, which hinders rather than helps innovation. Even then, every dollar spent on this is a dollar that could have been spent on R&D, capital investments, or something else more useful to society.

This is the key point. The free market needs low barriers of entry in order for competition to flourish. Patents are anti-competitive, creating monopolies where there ought not to be any.

Most inventions can be monetised by effective use of the first mover advantage - i.e. making a product and selling it before your competitors realise what you're doing, no government monopoly needed. Look at Apple - despite Microsoft being unencumbered with patent problems with respect to Apple (since MS and Apple cross-license), Microsoft are years behind Apple when it comes to the development of a touch-friendly consumer OS, or getting it deployed to devices. Likewise, despite the alleged 'massive infringement' of Android manufacturers ignoring Apple's patents, the iPad is taking the entire market. This is due to the first mover advantage - Apple had a polished product ready to go, and it's competitors are scrambling to catch up. During this time, Apple is making all the money and driving it's ecosystem into everyone's home. The worst thing that can happen would be for the patent thickets to wipe Android out as the development and advancement of Android has pushed iOS forwards as well - see the new notifications.

The purpose of patents is to promote research and development, and yet, aside from the chemical and drug industry (where avoiding infringement is easy, coming down to the simple avoidance of a chemical formula), there is no evidence that they do. Patents are often defended as a 'necessary evil'. That's half right.

Apart from legal firms and large entrenched firms (such as Apple in this example), it's hard to see how this is beneficial for society as a whole. Eliminating software patents right now seems like a lesser evil. I once had a long passionate argument with a patent lawyer on this subject - in the end, I concluded that he had few original arguments; he just spewed what he was taught in law school. Of course, it's tough to get people to agree when their self-interest is so closely tied to this. It's like arguing with a tobacco executive on the health impacts of smoking on society.

IMO, the patent and copyright systems have simply gone beyond their original intent. The exclusive rights granted now last too long. Mickey Mouse needs to become public domain.

Apart from legal firms and large entrenched firms (such as Apple in this example), it's hard to see how this is beneficial for society as a whole. Eliminating software patents right now seems like a lesser evil. I once had a long passionate argument with a patent lawyer on this subject - in the end, I concluded that he had few original arguments; he just spewed what he was taught in law school. Of course, it's tough to get people to agree when their self-interest is so closely tied to this. It's like arguing with a tobacco executive on the health impacts of smoking on society.

IMO, the patent and copyright systems have simply gone beyond their original intent. The exclusive rights granted now last too long. Mickey Mouse needs to become public domain.

Don't tell that to the many posters at ars who say1. This is just the way it is, it's the law2. No one has ever had a better way3. There is no incentive to produce software without patents on what is essentially an application of a mathematical algorithm

<sarc>Presumably there were no incentives to use maths previously which is why humans have never found much use for it</sarc>